Patient preferences and treatment safety for uncomplicated vulvovaginal candidiasis in primary health care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Vaginitis is a common complaint in primary care. In uncomplicated candidal vaginitis, there are no differences in effectiveness between oral or vaginal treatment. Some studies describe that the preferred treatment is the oral one, but a Cochrane's review points out inconsistencies associated with the report of the preferred way that limit the use of such data. Risk factors associated with recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis still remain controversial.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>This work describes a protocol of a multicentric prospective observational study with one year follow up, to describe the women's reasons and preferences to choose the way of administration (oral vs topical) in the treatment of not complicated candidal vaginitis. The number of women required is 765, they are chosen by consecutive sampling. All of whom are aged 16 and over with vaginal discharge and/or vaginal pruritus, diagnosed with not complicated vulvovaginitis in Primary Care in Madrid.</p> <p>The main outcome variable is the preferences of the patients in treatment choice; secondary outcome variables are time to symptoms relief and adverse reactions and the frequency of recurrent vulvovaginitis and the risk factors. In the statistical analysis, for the main objective will be descriptive for each of the variables, bivariant analysis and multivariate analysis (logistic regression).. The dependent variable being the type of treatment chosen (oral or topical) and the independent, the variables that after bivariant analysis, have been associated to the treatment preference.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Clinical decisions, recommendations, and practice guidelines must not only attend to the best available evidence, but also to the values and preferences of the informed patient.</p

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The LoCALL App: learning to “read” the world while playing with linguistic landscapes

No abstract available.publishe

Resumos concluídos - Ciências Biológicas

Resumos concluídos - Ciências Biológica

Considerations and consequences of allowing DNA sequence data as types of fungal taxa

Nomenclatural type definitions are one of the most important concepts in biological nomenclature. Being physical objects that can be re-studied by other researchers, types permanently link taxonomy (an artificial agreement to classify biological diversity) with nomenclature (an artificial agreement to name biological diversity). Two proposals to amend the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), allowing DNA sequences alone (of any region and extent) to serve as types of taxon names for voucherless fungi (mainly putative taxa from environmental DNA sequences), have been submitted to be voted on at the 11th International Mycological Congress (Puerto Rico, July 2018). We consider various genetic processes affecting the distribution of alleles among taxa and find that alleles may not consistently and uniquely represent the species within which they are contained. Should the proposals be accepted, the meaning of nomenclatural types would change in a fundamental way from physical objects as sources of data to the data themselves. Such changes are conducive to irreproducible science, the potential typification on artefactual data, and massive creation of names with low information content, ultimately causing nomenclatural instability and unnecessary work for future researchers that would stall future explorations of fungal diversity. We conclude that the acceptance of DNA sequences alone as types of names of taxa, under the terms used in the current proposals, is unnecessary and would not solve the problem of naming putative taxa known only from DNA sequences in a scientifically defensible way. As an alternative, we highlight the use of formulas for naming putative taxa (candidate taxa) that do not require any modification of the ICN.Peer reviewe

Evolving trends in the management of acute appendicitis during COVID-19 waves. The ACIE appy II study (vol 46, pg 2021, 2022)

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